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48 Comments
- bigtrouble77, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12At least you got the second part of your name correct...
Seriously, kde isn't made for older machines. Fluxbox and xfce are a much better route to go with legacy hardware and, most definately, will be snappier than winxp. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13your comment screams Windows fanboyism. Go Figure
- Phocion55, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Have you been skipping out on your anger management classes?
- Phocion55, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8clearly a joke serving as Ubuntu fanboy satire...
- cbreaker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Indeed the author of the review mentions he required KDE as his desktop.
- sworoc, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Glad to see somebody applauding Mepis, I myself am impressed with it, but more than anything it's just good to see encouraging words that recognize there is more out there than Ubuntu. It recognizes Broadcom as well.
Linux is Linux, and there are a lot of good options out there, yes even Ubuntu, but not just Ubuntu. - motang, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7Looks like only KDE distros...oh well. Nice review, and a bit surprised at the winner.
- vixenk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4"I've been using linux (mandriva, suse, ubuntu) for two years now, so u can't blame me of fanboyism!"
Funny you mention you tried out the top 3 distros that run the SLOWEST on my machine. :S - madREAPER, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I prefer PCLinuxOS over SimplyMEPIS myself. PCLinuxOS is the only one that has recognized my WiFi card so far.
- cbreaker, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5It's a 600Mhz box with 192MB RAM. KDE and all related applications run great on this configuration. Certian things might be a little slower, but I have a Sony VAIO notebook with very similar specs and Windows XP with FireFox, Wireless, and MS Office all run great - no reason KDE + OO wouldn't run great too - much better, in fact.
You're just rehashing what people said when the equivilent box was 300Mhz with 96MB RAM, or 150Mhz with 48MB RAM.. KDE is not slow. Get over it. - tzcomwhiz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3The beauty of Linux is it's customizable nature. So why should the "default" looks matter?
- brownspank, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Nice default = one less setting to tinker with.
- PRocker267, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Glad to hear MEPIS is doing well, meips was the very first distro i used and i still recommend it to this day, but im more of a ubuntu guy myself now.
- williamdyer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4That should have been made more clear. It explains the choice of distros in the comparison.
- larrywsm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Should have used VectorLinux.
Lightweight and designed to run on older harware. - Phocion55, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Depends on your configuration. Linux + Fluxbox will smoke WinXP on an old computer, hands down. I have a P2 128MB RAM, '98 Gateway running FC5 and Fluxbox at home used as a content server. Runs way better than Windows....
Plus, I think you're a bit overreacting about the intentions of the article. This is comparing different Linux distros......not Linux v. Windows.
Update: bigtrouble77 beat me to the Fluxbox shout-out :) - lonemarauder, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6There is some Kind of Kriteria the Kritic used to Kompare the distros in Kwestion, but I Kan't Kwite put my finger on it.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I have to try out MEPIS now but PCLinuxOS (as others have said here) was the only distro that I have found (after going through all the big ones including suse, kubuntu, mandriva, etc) that works with broadcom chipsets on my laptops out of the box. You can make them work on ubuntu/kubuntu (which is what I use now in the end) but honestly I would say that "Big Daddy" is the best distro for anyone from the newest noob trying to learn like I was/am to the most advanced user because at the heart of it all ... Linux is Linux is Linux is Linux and its just a nice GUI that makes it different.
- bloodylip, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I love Gentoo, but I would definitely think twice about putting it on a P3 600MHz machine. Not saying it couldn't be done, but it would probably take quite a while. And this is coming from someone who was running it on my 1.5GHz Celeron laptop for a few years.
- sworoc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2If you are a sysadmin of over 1000 *nix machines and are trying to administer them quickly over remote connection, it is much more efficient to log in as root, simply type in the commands, and log out. This is also true of file manipulation.
As long as he/she knows what they are doing, there is no difference between logging in as root and typing sudo before each command. You can get into just as much trouble if you dont' know what you're doing, because the commands have just as much power (to mess stuff up).
However, the point of not having a root account and using sudo is mostly for people new to linux that log in to root and do everything there for long periods of time, maybe even walk away from the machine logged in as root. THAT is where the danger comes from, not from the root account itself. - subgeniusd, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2As (apparently) the only Xandros user in all of DiggWorld I have to agree. Xandros works fine for n00bs but has an active dev community tweaking it like crazy.
Just my 2 cents.... - drizek, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2You cant really run gnome on 192mb ram anyway. On my 192mb thinkpad even kde is a PITA, e17 FTW. Kubuntu with e17 total uses up 50mb ram, which is pretty amazing i think. KDE uses about twice as much.
- drizek, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1windows WONT run well on 192mb. Thats just a plain fact. WIth the latest linux distros you pretty much get all the features of windows xp/vista. if you were to run windows on that even win 2k would be a stretch.
- timothybroder, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1no gentoo! =(
- sinembarg0, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1By the way, the 2662 series of IBMs are ultraportables, I would think his is an X24 because I have a 2662 thinkpad thats an X24
- lordroberts68, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'm very pleased that PCLinuxOS did so well. I tried all those distributions out when I finally decided to give up the Microsoft habit and take back my data. The one I settled on was PCLinux OS, purely because I found it the easiest to work with. It's fonts looked good, it recognised all my hardware, it came in three variations which meant I could go for the minimal version (MiniMe) without all the cruft that seems to come with other distributions and was then able to install my favourite apps that I was familiar with on Windows (FireFix, Thunderbird, VLC, Audacity etc). I did try Ubuntu but I just couldn't get on with it, but I'm so glad I found a Linux distribution that I can live with at last.
- DAC1138, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Why settle for just seven distros when there are thousands more out there?
- MichiganJeep, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Good for Mepis. With Ubuntu as its backbone for repositories it a nice choice. The last build did a great job in configuring my wireless card, whereas in the previous build, I had to manually change the default chipset it picked. I like the premiss of the benchmark of the the distros.
Here's a wish list for other Linux benchmarks I'd like to see:
* Linux Server
* Usb Linux
* Parallels Linux on the Mac - TheZorch, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@ drizek
"windows WONT run well on 192mb. Thats just a plain fact. WIth the latest linux distros you pretty much get all the features of windows xp/vista. if you were to run windows on that even win 2k would be a stretch."
Exactly and many of these distros will run just fine on that much memory and on older hardware. This is where Linux shines in comparison to Windows. When a new version of Windows comes out its system requirements increase dramatically. Linux can run on almost anything. - vixenk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It really depends on your definition of "fine".
Regardless, they both have matching minimum system requirements. Most distros that come with KDE recommend at least 128mb of ram and a pentium/athlon cpu. The same goes for XP. Case closed. - hgcphoenix, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I recently gave xubuntu a try on a farily new Asus A6 laptop and was surprised at how fast it seemed. It was a trouble free install too. I only had a problem with sound which a little tweaking with the mixer settings fixed.
Since ubuntu and kubuntu worked well on this review. Perhaps he should give xubuntu a try too. - Grog140, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1He mentioned the rebranding of Firefox at one point and they don't insist on rebranding it they are not allowed to call it firefox because the implement patches that alter how it works and therefor if it breaks doesn't really hurt the firefox name.
- xenix, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Although I disagree with the article saying you windows wont run well on the listed system, I do find the article cool. I'm a windows fan but i do like to using older systems for practicing usage of Linux. So this will help me pick a good basic distro
- fjc8, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Fonts are one of my biggest complaints about Linux, and PCLinuxOS appears to have a decent default font that I can stand.
- fjc8, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1That's not a fact at all.
Windows 2000 runs fine on 128 MB of RAM.
KDE OTOH doesn't.
XP runs fine on 256 MB or less if there isn't crap running on the background.
These sediments are repeated across the internet by people that have _actually used both Windows and Linux_.
Way back in the day, it was Windows that ran fine in 24 MB of RAM and Gnome that struggled...
And any computer sold as Vista compatible or that comes with Vista will have enough RAM. - bananatower, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2on that laptop I would have choosen Zenwalk...xfce is much lighter on resources. And they have built a nice default install around it.
That said, for a modern system, Mepis has been a favourite for a while. Even my wife will touch it! ;) Everything just works. And very digital camera/mp3 player friendly....
- wernst, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I really didn't see anything about the relative speed differences between all these distros, which I think is kind of important, given the topic of "Good Distro's for Old Hardware." Certainly easy installation is important, but I'm willing to put up with a clunkier installation if the resulting OS is significantly faster.
How hard would it have been to even measure boot times with a stopwatch? Or even take any sort of performance metric? - heston, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Glad to hear somebody appriciated mephis, but its really disappointing mandriva didnt get any rating,,,
- Patented, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I think it is beyond retarded that he branded Kubuntu's lack of a root account a "con", it's an integral feature of the OS. Reminds me of this comic...
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/09/06 - LightsOut06, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3Nice review. One reason why I like PCLinuxOS over all the distros mentioned is that the default font settings look waaaaaaaaaaaaay nicer. One thing that should have been mentioned is bootup times. I need to give MEPIS a try.
- mydave, on 07/26/2008, -0/+0looks pretty nice, that's why I like PC LinuxOS.
http://www.ocflex.com/
http://www.trgovinca.org
http://www.chasr.org/ - Shadowman, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Should be "Seven KDE Linux distros fight over one old ThinkPad". A lame comparison! Most companies use *nix distros that have Gnome as their default desktop such as Red Hat, Novell SUSE, and Sun Solaris. Except for maybe Xandros these distros are for n00bs and home PCs or laptops.
- cbreaker, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0@bigtrouble:
"Seriously, kde isn't made for older machines. Fluxbox and xfce are a much better route to go with legacy hardware and, most definately, will be snappier than winxp."
Yes but this machine isn't THAT old. Five years maybe? Still - it's 600Mhz and has 192MB RAM with 20GB disk. That's more then enough to run KDE and office applications at least as fast as Windows XP.
"Old Machines" is not the same now as "Old Machines" was five years ago. - oxandrolone, on 10/12/2007, -3/+0No, really, I've been going around my university dorm installing linux, and i find that linux does not run as fast on older machines as xp does. Take for example, my friend's PC which is 733 MHz pIII with 128 mb ram. He runs xp on it and it is quite snappy. I installed ubuntu and vector soho, and each time it runs way too slow for day-to-day use. I agree, fluxbox and xfce might run better, but he wants gnome/kde since they look better than xp. So, really, it's hard for me to beleive that linux desktops run faster on older hardware. Or rather, people should rephrase it and say "linux with fluxbox runs faster than xp on older pc" ?? P.S. I've been using linux (mandriva, suse, ubuntu) for two years now, so u can't blame me of fanboyism!
- MrTranscendence, on 10/12/2007, -7/+1Nah, just snarky sarcasm.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -7/+1Awesome, the guy actually installed a working linux distro to a laptop... I just wondering ***** noobs why document this, maybe he thought he will become famous if writeing meaningless articles like this. Linux installation is sooo ***** simple every1 can do it nowadays.
He is far from configureing a light desktop manager like blackbox or fluxbox or compile a kernel so IT JUNK article, but Let's just say OK, This is lame %) - Phocion55, on 10/12/2007, -18/+8Buried as inaccurate because Kubuntu didn't win and EVERYONE know's *buntu is the greatest thing out there
- usefulidiot, on 10/12/2007, -31/+4How can you consider a p3 600mhz too slow to run the latest version of windows? Windows XP will run waaay faster on that machine that ANY linux distro hands down, and then if you tune the services properly winxp will scream on a machine like that.Not to mention suspend works, and the cpu fan isnt always running(QT is a pig). My old toshiba satelite 300mhz 94mb ram runs xp smooth as ice. this article just screams linux fanboyism.
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